7 People’s First Jobs They Had Before They Became Billionaires

No matter the person, they all have to start somewhere in life no matter the life that they will lead. While there are certainly some who are born to riches – like some millionaires and royalty – this isn’t often the case for self-made billionaires. They made their wealth their own way and it all started from pretty humble beginnings. Today we’ll be focusing on billionaires’ first jobs who were not born into money.

Warren Buffett – Paperboy

Today we know Warren Buffett as an investment genius, a man who has the highest known IQ and knows exactly when and where to put your money to make even more. He is a rich man through and through, but despite all of this, he started out with one of the most typical jobs that we would start off with as kids today: paper delivery. At the young age of 13, Buffett began building his wealth and own billion-dollar empire by taking up a paper route. But he did a lot more than just deliver paper. He was also wise with how he spent his money. While most teenagers would spend their money on ice cream, he saved it up to start his first legit business. He built a pinball machine business, and since then, kept looking for various business opportunities. He did this until he graduated from college with a good chunk of change in his pocket from all of his ventures. About $10,000 to be precise.

Bill Gates – Programmer

It’d be strange to see Bill Gates – founder of Microsoft and richest man alive – to have his first job not involve computers at all. Fortunately for Gates, his career involving computers actually started with this specific type of work. It’s not common knowledge, but Gates’s passion for computers started at a very young age. It wasn’t something that suddenly sprang out of nowhere in his college years. He started working as a computer programmer for TRW in his senior year in high school. It was this experience specifically that lit the fire and he started to blaze a path to where he is now.

Today though, he has started to move away from Microsoft after growing it and making himself a huge success from that. He is now focusing more on the Bill and Melinda Gate Foundation, which is known for improving education, developing vaccines and giving access to numerous opportunities to the underprivileged communities.

Michael Dell – Waterboy & Dishwasher

Today we know Dell for the computers that he created, but before he started his company, he worked as a dishwasher. He hopped from restaurant to restaurant washing dishes. His first case of this was working at a Chinese restaurant at the young age of 12. Through his hard work and immense dedication, he was promoted to handling waterboy duties and working as an assistant maitre d’ at that same location. After he left that place he hopped over to a Mexican restaurant to do the same thing.

Jeff Bezos – McDonald’s Worker

Everyone knows Jeff Bezos by now as the man behind one of the largest businesses in the world: Amazon. But before he became the CEO of the company, Bezos started out in another typical job we would turn to as an entry job: flipping burgers. In the book “Golden Opportunity: Remarkable Careers that Began at McDonalds,” Bezos talked about his humble beginnings.

Of course the book covers many others, but for Bezos specifically, he talked about his personal experience working there in great detail. During his teenage years, his father used to work for the fast food chain and was the reason he could get in so easily. Going into his experiences in detail, Bezos explained that he was always flipping burgers and never was at the cash register. Furthermore the greatest challenge he faced was staying level-headed and steady during the rush hours. Thankfully, he had a great manager there to keep the crew focused and also have fun while at work.